The match began at a walking pace and offered little hope of speeding up at any point, making for a rather dour and boring affair. Chelsea passed the ball around leisurely at the back while Wrexham sat back with all eleven behind the ball, observing it all without breaking a sweat.
Wrexham finally got a kick a quarter hour in, and of course they would score from it: a simple ball over the top, one good touch and a decent finish, but plenty of fingers to be pointed at the defending and goalkeeping.
The goal did not inspire any more cutting edge from the Blues. We labored around aimlessly, posing little threat, until Liam Delap shook off a couple defenders and Alejandro Garnacho found a bit of space to shoot. His shot was blocked on the line, but the defender’s attempted clearance hit the goalkeeper in the back and bounced over the line, and so the two team headed into the break level on the scoreboard.
There were no changes at half time and thus there were no changes to the football on the pitch as play resumed. Both sides started making some attacking changes around the hour mark to try to change the situation, but it were the home side who were slowly but surely growing into the ascendancy.
And sure enough, Wrexham would take the lead in the 79th minute after a poor corner clearance was hammered back towards goal and deflected in.
Thankfully, Chelsea would be behind for only a couple minutes before a nice ball found Josh Acheampong of all players in the area to absolutely leather the ball into the roof of the net and level proceedings once again!
Chelsea had a great chance to win it in regulation, but Neto struck the crossbar with the goal at his mercy, and into extra-time we’d go. And the Blues would have a numerical advantage in that extra-time after George Dobson’s lunge into Garnacho was upgraded on review from a yellow to a red card.
Not unexpectedly, it was all Chelsea in the extra period, and after Marc Guiu saw an effort cleared off the line, a good cross found an unmarked Garnacho at the far post, and he made no mistake in smacking it into the back of the net. There was some confusion as he hit the back bottom rail of the goal so cleanly that it appeared that he had hit the post instead, but the goal was given as it should’ve been, and Chelsea were in the lead for the first time all night.
Chelsea decided to sit on the narrow advantage, and to the surprise of no one, Wrexham would equalize from a corner. Thankfully that equalizer would not count as we were saved by a toe and the VAR, who ruled out the goal, correctly, for a narrow offside.
Wrexham had a couple late chances, but Chelsea would hang on and advance. João Pedro made sure of that with a goal in the final minute, to give us something to really smile about.
Carefree.
- Rosenior again attempts to run a back-three; again to less than promising results
- Neto deployed as the No.10 again; not so great as the last time, against Hull City
- Welcome back, Dário Essugo
- The draw for the quarterfinals will be on Monday
- Next up: PSG away, on Wednesday
- KTBFFH
